Longitudinal growth trajectories of reading and math achievement were studied in four primary school grade cohorts (GCs) of a large urban district to examine academic risk and resilience in homeless and highly mobile (H/HM) students. Initial achievement was assessed when student cohorts were in the second, third, fourth, and fifth grades, and again 12 and 18 months later. Achievement trajectories of H/HM students were compared to low-income but nonmobile students and all other tested...

Much interest exists among parents and researchers regarding the benefits and drawbacks of delaying kindergarten entrance to acquire academic advantage ("redshirting"). How evident is this assumed advantage at the kindergarten level and beyond? The authors evaluated largescale test data from Grades K-8 to investigate the difference in performance between younger children (summer birthday) and older children (fall birthday). The performance gap evident in kindergarten decreased rapidly in...

The American aspiration for higher education as a road to a better life for everyone is threatened. As the economic and social gap between the upper third of the population and the bottom third widens, so access to better education, especially to higher education, becomes increasingly difficult to achieve. The traditional role of hope in the American Democratic Dream of a just and fair society is being eroded, as increasing numbers of Americans are marginalized, jailed, recruited into...

The article discusses the factors involved on the issue about disproportion which refers to the absence of minority students in the classroom of gifted students in the U.S. One main factor is an assumption of equality in ability between ethnic and racial groups at birth with no superior races involved. The author explains that the country's educational system is facing real differences in the development of intellectual abilities of students by school age which is a morally and socially...

In the wake of both the end of court-ordered school desegregation and the growing popularity of accountability as a mechanism to maximize student achievement, the authors explore the association between racial segregation and the percentage of students passing high-stakes tests in Florida's schools. Results suggest that segregation matters in predicting school-level performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test after control for other known and purported predictors of standardized...

This study measures the effectiveness of Collaborative Learning Assessment through Dialogue (CLAD) on reading achievement in inclusive classrooms in the USA. The CLAD process involved students collaboratively completing multiple-choice quizzes, using dialogue and critical thinking to reach consensus and receiving immediate feedback on their responses. The procedure was implemented in three third-grade classrooms (n = 30) in a midwestern elementary school for the purpose of reducing a...

The academic achievement gap, particularly the mathematics achievement gap, between Black students and their White counterparts has been well documented with numerical facts. As mathematics education researchers attempt to develop theories and practices that assist in eradicating the gap, they would serve mathematics education well if they would expand the sphere of their research into the sociocultural arena. To assist in expanding the sphere, this article presents a review of key...

The article discusses how lessons taught to white and Asian students may eliminate the achievement gap. According to the author, social factors affect children of color including African American and Latino school children making them not as proficient as their white and Asian-American counterparts. An overview of the lesson plan reflecting questions on the students' personal experience that relate to social, political, and economic conditions is offered. The author suggests that teachers...

Many studies have been conducted on the achievement gap, with most findings pointing to how school and family variables affect Black students' achievement. Another body of work focuses on how social variables (i.e., peers) impact Black students' achievement, including how accusations of "acting White" affect the performance of Black students and contribute to the achievement gap. The current descriptive and exploratory study extends this work by examining peer pressure among Black students...

The data of a previous study by the author are examined for sex differences in the solution of geometric originals. The subjects are 53 boys and 36 girls. Although the boys are somewhat higher in general mental ability and in reasoning ability, the girls reach a higher achievement. "Especially were the girls the more superior in responding to those 'link' steps, by means of which they were able to bridge the gap between the given relations (those observed with the pertinent recalled facts...

This study of diverse Asian American students at a racially integrated public high school illustrates that the achievement gap is a multi-racial problem that cannot be well understood solely in terms of the trajectories of Black and white students. Asian American students demonstrated a high academic profile on average, but faced difficulties and failure in ways rendered invisible by widespread acceptance of the “Model Minority Myth,” which says that Asians comprise the racial minority...

Low educational attainment has been a barrier to the advancement of Hispanic Americans in the United States, and a number of explanations for this have been suggested. One group of explanations centers around Hispanic Americans' use and exposure to English. A second group of explanations focuses more on socioeconomic disadvantages facing this population. Much of the research that looks at educational attainment among Hispanic Americans, however, does not consider Hispanic group differences...

In this article, the author argues that wealth, which is an indicator of both financial and human capital, can affect academic achievement, as well as help to explain the gap in black-white test scores. Analyses reveal that wealth affects achievement through its effect on the amount of cultural capital to which a child is exposed. Because blacks have substantially less wealth than do whites, wealth can help to explain a portion of the racial achievement gap. The implications of the findings...

This article examines the extent to which family wealth affects the Black–White test score gap for young children based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (aged 3–12). This study found little evidence that wealth mediated the Black–White test scores gaps, which were eliminated when child and family demographic covariates were held constant. However, family wealth had a stronger association with cognitive achievement of school-aged children than that of preschoolers and a...

The authors examined the degree to which disparities in parent and child acculturation are linked to both family and child adjustment. With a sample of 1st- and 2nd-generation Mexican American children, acculturation and parent-child relationship quality at 5th grade, and parent-child conflict, child internalizing, and child externalizing at 7th grade were measured. Acculturation gaps with fathers were found to be related to later father-child conflict as well as internalizing and...

In this rejoinder, the authors further detail their positions on the role of gaps analyses in mathematics education research as outlined in the previous 2 articles. They clarify areas of agreement and probe areas of disagreement, focusing on the benefits and dangers they see in either emphasizing educational disparities between groups or shifting the focus to the advancement of particular groups. The authors discuss ways in which their backgrounds have shaped their differences in...